• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

romualdillo's little BATs & Problems

Started by romualdillo, May 21, 2014, 09:53:03 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

romualdillo

manga rivotra: Sorry, I think I didn't mention it before. This facades are supposed to be for a building with one apartment per level. At this time every home needed one direct access to the street to be considered as an independent unit, that's why they have two doors. The round window lits the staircase to the second floor in all the models but the last ones, where it is part of the living room. Art-Noveau homes could have those kind of unusual things. Thank you for your help!

matias93

Definitely the 4th option. That bull's eye window deserves an enhanced place at the facade. And considering it is low wealth, some mismatching is acceptable: many houses could have been unwisely modified after they get abandoned by the original owners, so the conjoined style tends to be lost.

At least, that is what has happened in Santiago's 19th century high wealth neigbourhoods (particularly Yungay and Dieciocho): houses reconverted to commerce, with widened windows on street level and shutted windows inmediately upstairs, or houses that became conventillos, with mended, mismatching windows and weird colour patterns by non coordinated paintings.

As reference: Centro Cultural Nave (right) and its adjacent building in Yungay, Santiago.

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

vortext

Yes I meant those windows on the round window middle option, I quite like it. Also like the asymmetrical variant as well, the one the left here.
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

bombardiere

My favourities are 2 and 12.

I like that round window and it fits nicely on the right, but I think it should be on that higher postion. It looks like a fancy stairwell corridor window.

And number 12 because I am in for symmetrical architecture. I guess I have played too much with Georigian stuff, but I like its elegant simplicity. :) I chose the red version, because I am not sure would those multicoloured blocks work well in SC4 environment. It could pixelate and look jagged in the game.

romualdillo

Well, I think enough time has passed to make a decision...  :D I'm sorry I've been absent for almost a month but I've been really busy and I think I'm going to be in that situation for the next months. Anyway, I'm still active and I keep working on my models, but I have only little time.

After counting your votes and reading your comments and suggestions, I think I'm going to use #18 (vortext's suggestion) for the two-story R$ 8x24 version. I really like the idea and I think it could look great. Don't worry about the "colourful" stones, they won't be so colourful.  #4 will be used in a new shape I'm working on, a two story R$ 8x12 version for 1x1 lots. #2 is very similar, but I like #4 most. Now I'll have to think about the corner version...

matias93: I know what you say, those phenomena were very common in lots of Spanish cities and towns. Fortunately they have become less usual after the renovation of most cities' old cores, but there's still a lot of work to do. I didn't think about it when I made the facade, just because art-nouveau facades were anti-classical and aimed to break the architectural rules.

In the next pictures you'll see the new R$ shape and the first colour variations (blue houses). I hope you like them!! See you!











kbieniu7

Amazing work, especially like Themistokles once has said, you've spent so much time with this set and thus made it big enough to create a whole city with just itself!  &apls

And, as bombardiere has said, their style are not much fitting to northern Europe - obviously, its an inspiration from your "backyard" ;) but I have a feeling, some of those houses might fit, if somebody builds a Hungarian-styled town too :)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

noahclem

Beautiful work as always  &apls &apls   Great to see you're still active!

matias93

Your dedication to detail is simply amazing, I can even guess how rooms are internally distributed on the inside (lots of rented rooms, of course).


And fairly, it was wise to omit the bull's eye window this time: it looks like a medium or even high wealth home could profit more from it.

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

romualdillo

#648
kbieniu7: Thank you!! It's interesting that you mention that, because you made me think about the movie "Evita", that was filmed in Budapest (if I'm not mistaken)... So there should be some similarities to Buenos Aires, and it's said that Buenos Aires is very similar to Madrid, so there might be some relation, perhaps some French influence, perhaps the "Oriental" influence, perhaps the climate... I think I'm going to investigate through several Hungarian towns...  ;)

noahclem: Thank you!! Still going strong!  :P

matias93: Thank you!! So, if I understood you correctly you think that the bullseye window is too ornate for a R$ building... Well you may be right... or not... The facade was the most important part of a building at that time and most people dedicated most of their efforts and money in building a good facade, even workmen... In Spain is spoken about "modernismo obrero" (Working-class Art-Nouveau). When a working-class family could afford a small lot (normally 8x20m, they could be smaller or bigger) to build their house (or two houses), they normally built a simple traditional structure, but with a strongly ornated facade "à la mode" built with pre-made industrial-produced ornaments. The decorative solutions increased if the owner was a builder himself. So this kind of things were not too strange. This point was less visible in bigger rental buildings, whose purpose was making money. You can still see this kind of buildings on the outskirts of Barcelona, Valencia (Cabanyal), Melilla, Ceuta, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or the former colonial towns of Castillejos, Larache, Tetuán or even Tanger in Morocco. There are other examples, but these are my main references. Even the "casas chorizo" in Argentina were built the same way. I don't know Chile as much as Argentina, so I can't speak of it, but some Chilean cities totally look like cities in Northern Spain (Galicia, Asturias or Cantabria), especially Valparaíso. I like this kind of discussions, I like to know different visions and opinions about my work.

Well, I think we have different options again... Remember these are R$ facades, I would like to know your opinion, I prefer the round window options, but if most of you think the other options are better, I'll accept it.  :thumbsup:

Asymmetrical (8x12 R$ shape, one dwelling, ignore the second door)



Symmetrical (8x24 R$ shape, two dwellings)



This was left behind in my previous post, it will be the inner yard of the Neo-Mudexar? House. It's an experiment with photorealistic textures, I still have to test it in G-max.



A new colour variation I made today (house in the middle):





I hope you like it and please tell me your opinion!!  ;)


matias93

That was, in fact, what I said. I thought that such heavily ornated window wouldn't match a worker's house, but your description changes everything, so I'll go for the fourth option this time.

Here in Chile, most workers 'arrived late' to modernism (and to cities), mainly around the 1940s, so most buildings with an Art-Noveau style were made for rich people, or maybe some middle class professional. In any case, this country praises itself on its seriousness, so the predominant tastes weren't flamboyant structures nor trendy styles, but mainly neoclassical buildings, with strong french influences and already outmoded at the time. The few counterexamples were houses of european inmigrants.

For the middle class, the most sophisticated design available was something like this: one floor W2W building with some mouldings to distinguish itself from the plain mortar of the adjacent houses (click for the map):




In fact, as most workers got houses of their own by the 1940s, there was a sharp divide between styles along class lines: whom were already rich on that period stuck with old european themes, while middle class and workers veered firmly towards modernism, mainly because the State built on those styles, avoiding instances of self-building until the 1960s. For example, this social housing building, as early as 1939:





As a bottom line, probably one of the main reasons to keep styles very spartan was the certitude that earthquakes would tore down all buildings every 25 years or so, no matter the class of the owners. Now reinforced concrete helps, but when building one always knows that everything will have to be, at least, repaired after the next earthquake.

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

kbieniu7

Quote from: romualdillo on July 25, 2016, 05:40:57 PM
kbieniu7: Thank you!! It's interesting that you mention that, because you made me think about the movie "Evita", that was filmed in Budapest (if I'm not mistaken)... So there should be some similarities to Buenos Aires, and it's said that Buenos Aires is very similar to Madrid, so there might be some relation, perhaps some French influence, perhaps the "Oriental" influence, perhaps the climate... I think I'm going to investigate through several Hungarian towns...  ;)

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this movie, so I couldn't relate to it. But, if I think about influence, I guess, it's more austrian-related (which might have taken something from oriental stylings). I mean, they're not same-looking as your Spanish housings, obviously, but I think they have something in common, like ornaments in very small tenements (in contrary, in Poland it's much less often, I think) and gray, grayish-white or grayish-yellow tones.

Here are some examples, which I have found with Google Street View. Hungarian and Romanian (post-hungarian) towns.

Hungary:
https://www.google.pl/maps/@46.8830083,17.4440194,3a,75y,46.11h,89.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1so9HmSV0-pL7a5CVV-naNFg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.pl/maps/@46.6573838,20.2572827,3a,75y,201.07h,95.44t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1siN-BAeUjitvD_yGL61q1hQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.pl/maps/@46.6491624,20.2577155,3a,75y,184.34h,87.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swwsXu2lwkyjV5x7Bl-elLg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.pl/maps/@47.6636829,19.0761606,3a,89.5y,265.57h,82.71t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svYyUMS1ty-Ah68dK5QYJIw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Western Romania:
https://www.google.pl/maps/@45.4099563,22.2193739,3a,75y,205.52h,79.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5BcWMDRQ0JbH-q-eUfXRAg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=pl

https://www.google.pl/maps/@46.6663363,22.3528411,3a,75y,158.14h,99.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdgEKX0ro1d5OLjE1faMbVw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=pl

I have feeling, like I'm a bit off-topicing, but I hope you excuse me for that. I was in Spain just for several hours while landing in Girona and taking a train to France, so I could add more from eastern european architectural point of view, than my spanish experience  ::) But, anyway, I think, that somebody from Hungary would be able to say something better about this (off)topic :)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

romualdillo

matias93: Of course every country develops in its own way, and there might be differences. I've been looking around the neighbourhood, and there are several examples that could fit in both middle or working-class. The intention was making difficult to guess the social condition of its owner. I think I'm going off-topic, but I like speaking about these things. I spoke about working-class families that could afford to buy a lot, so they were not strictly part of the lowest class, but they were not middle class either. Building a house was a life-project, and bricks were bought in installments (in fact, my gradfather's first job was going house by house collecting the money for the bricks). Families that couldn't afford to buy a lot or a house rented a flat or some rooms (or a room). My intention is doing collective buildings, too, but I made the basic buildings first.  ;)
BTW: The "Hermanitas de los Pobres" home in Carmen street looks very interesting...  ::)

kbieniu7: I'm not sure... Shapes, roofs and proportions are different, but details and colours might be similar. There is also some Italian influence, too... Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... I must say that I've been looking some Russian buildings that could fit perfectly... It may sound a bit weird, but I think it all depends on shape and proportions...  ;)
Don't worry about your experience, every opinion is welcomed. There are also strong differences between Northern, Middle and Southern Spain, so there are lots of possibilities.  :thumbsup:


bombardiere

Quote from: romualdillo on July 25, 2016, 05:40:57 PM

matias93: Thank you!! So, if I understood you correctly you think that the bullseye window is too ornate for a R$ building... Well you may be right... or not... The facade was the most important part of a building at that time and most people dedicated most of their efforts and money in building a good facade, even workmen... In Spain is spoken about "modernismo obrero" (Working-class Art-Nouveau). When a working-class family could afford a small lot (normally 8x20m, they could be smaller or bigger) to build their house (or two houses), they normally built a simple traditional structure, but with a strongly ornated facade "à la mode" built with pre-made industrial-produced ornaments. The decorative solutions increased if the owner was a builder himself. So this kind of things were not too strange. This point was less visible in bigger rental buildings, whose purpose was making money. You still can see this kind of buildings on the outskirts of Barcelona, Valencia (Cabanyal), Melilla, Ceuta, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or former colonial towns of Castillejos, Larache, Tetuán or even Tanger in Morocco. There are other examples, but these are my main references. Even the "casas chorizo" in Argentina were built the same way. I don't know Chile as much as Argentina, so I can't speak of it, but some Chilean cities totally look like cities in Northern Spain (Galicia, Asturias or Cantabria), especially Valparaíso. I like this kind of discussions, I like to know different visions and opinions about my work.

Well, I think we have different options again... Remember these are R$ facades, I would like to know your opinion, I prefer the round window options, but if most of you think the other options are better, I'll accept it.  :thumbsup:


This is actually a problem for me. A building is a building but what is a wealth? :) Or more precisely how it shows on an average street? Especially as I do historical buildings.

A modern luxury apartment tower is very different from a council housing block, but what about an historical building that has passed on many generations? A wealth and desirability of particular area can change, but the building can be there for 100s of years.

For example, I draw inspiration from London's Spitalfield area. Just east of the City. During its heyday in late 18th century, the French Hugenots settled in that area and established a silk weaving industry. So they were what I feel could be called as the middle class, many probable well-to-do, so houses they built would be R$$ and some bigger ones may be R$$$.

But hundred years onwards by mid and late 19th century the Spitalfield was a notorious Victorian slum and famous Jack the Ripper murder happened around this area. The buildings were the same, but converted into a boarding rooms.

Then again today The Spitalfield area has become fashionable and anyway the housing prices has gone through the roof in London  and you basically need to be a multimillionaire to buy a house in Central London.

So I have a dilemma here. The same building, but three possible wealth levels, R$, R$$ and R$$$. So how would I differniate  wealth levels in the SC4 game context?

Size could be a factor. Poorer people has less space to live. Then the textures to show that the building is not being taken care of. Also this could have less details and perhaps some of the earlier decoration has been broken off. A wealthy person could have a nice garden in the backyard, but boarding room owner would probably build ramshackle extensions and shacks on every available space.

This is both exiting and frustrating. :D How to get those minor details to show up in the game, so that a vision in my head would be visible to everyone?  :-\

matias93

Props, tons of props!


When a luxury house is converted into rented rooms (conventillo, casa chorizo, whatever), many subtle modifications have to be done: windows and doors are walled or converted to each other, new walls are added, which are visible from the outside, there are more chimneys on the roof, gardens are usually converted into tiled or cemented yards, with utilitarian props on them (hanging clothing, basins, building tools, surplus materials, logs for heating, etc) and the quality of materials goes down, with mismatched roof plates, paint colours or exposed masonry.


I could post dozens of RL references, with before and after photos, but I'm sure we all have seen them first-hand (except maybe rural US based forumers, this is a very urban phenomenon)


"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

romualdillo

I think it is really hard to do.  :'( Of course the game has its own way to recreate dilapidation, you may like it or not, but it has. C.P. has his own realistic method which works pretty good when the lot gets abandoned, but the fact is that the game allows only two-stage props (ON/OFF). Multiple stage props got abandoned during the game development due to their memory requirements. If this were the case, we could have different models for each lot's or building's state: In use, abandoned, dilapidated, Christmas time, night, summer, winter... But these are the game's limitations. Another point is that we have only three social classes, which also limits the realism of buildings. If we had R$-1, R$-2, R$-3, my R$ buildings would be R$-3 or even R$$-1, but we can only simulate that... The problem is that an overcrowded slum (conventillo, ciudadela, corrala...) is more attractive for the game than the supposed R$-3 buildings. I plan to do denser and deeper R$ (and even R$$) buildings (with some income changes), but I don't feel very comfortable about doing supposedly dilapidated buildings, although I think they could look good in a themed neighbourhood. I'm going to consider that, but in my opinion it's really complicated to get a good result, and the game mechanics don't help at all. You'll need to use a lot your plugins folder to controle growth. As bombardiere said is really tricky to represent wealth in historic buildings.
I think we all would be REALLY happy if the game could get actualized with multiple stage lots, more social classes, real HD, improved water mechanics (and even reflections), customizable zoning, perhaps some regional policies, and decrypted electric wires...  :D But this will never happen,  &mmm and this is already a GREAT game which already allows you to do a lot of things.  ()stsfd()
I think I've written more in these last three posts than in all my history in this forum...  :D 

Akallan

Well, what work! It's impressive, you even redone the streets! And the houses are very close to those that can be found in the ancient villages of Sud Italy, with power lines! ()stsfd() It's very beautiful, but they are not downloaded?
My CJ :


My european road textures project : S N T - v.2.1

romualdillo

Akallan: Thank you!! The street texture is not mine, Vortext is working on it, and he sent me a beta version. I hope he can finish it soon  ::)  :D.
The power lines are included in my prop pack. I didn't put them on the lots, because other users may want to combine them with other lots, and they wouldn't look good together.
After several attempts I finally got something out of the new facades. I hope you like them. I'll be out for the next two weeks, so I won't be able to post anything until then. See you!












korver

The new facades look great, keep up the good work :thumbsup:

romualdillo

#659
Hi folks!
I'm sorry this is not an update but an apology, as I haven't post anything during the last... 5 months! I'm very sorry for that, but RL has taken me away from the game and the forum. I also had to purchase a new computer and I haven't installed the game by now. I know it's such a process with windows 10 and if I want the BAT to run properly I'll need a bit of time to finish what I'm doing at the moment and prepare everything to get back to work. I hope everything is OK with all of you, and as soon as I have something new I'll be posting again.
See you!
;)